Acknowledgements

APA Studies is pleased to welcome Dr. Meaghan Kozar as the new program coordinator. Dr. Kozar’s duties include program publicity and recruitment, programming, and advising. She brings to the program many years of experience in student services and Asian American studies, and a perspective that focuses on intersections between Asian Americans and other communities of color. We look forward to new collaborations that will be facilitated through her continued role as an OCAT coordinator. We are confident that she will infuse the program with new enthusiasm and energy, and look forward to working with her!

Publications and Awards

Steve Gold

APA Studies Program Advisory Board member Steve Gold continued his active research agenda in all areas of migration and ethnicity, with publications on Israeli Jewish immigration and Black enterpreneurship in Detroit in the last year. He also presented at the American Sociological Association conference on the Impact of the Global Recession on International Migration. You can check out his video on the Dearborn Arab American Festival, “Arab and Proud” on YouTube!

Anna Pegler-Gordon

Incoming Program Director Anna Pegler-Gordon presented her new research on Asian immigrants at Ellis Island at three premier national conferences, the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the Association for Asian American Studies. She will be presenting research on “Citizen Aliens” and the ways that Chinese migrants have challenged territorial ideas of citizenship at the American Studies Association in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in fall 2012.

Guofang Li

Associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education, Guofang Li also works in the area of education with two new co-edited books: Best practices in ELL (English Language Learning) Instruction and the Handbook of Asian Education: A Cultural Perspective.

Desiree Qin

Desiree Qin, who serves on the APA Studies Program Advisory Board, published important research this year refuting the Amy Chua’s “Tiger Mother” theory of Chinese parenting. Like Chua, Qin is a Chinese mother, but her research and personal experience suggests that high demands within some Chinese families may lead to an achievement-adjustment paradox in which highperforming students also have high levels of anxiety and rates of suicide. She shared her research at the prestigious American Psychological Association annual meeting in a presentation titled, “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Chinese Tiger Mothers but Were Afraid to Ask.” Instead of the tiger parent approach, Qin says that “There is a healthy middle ground between the parenting extremes of the East and West. What is most beneficial to children, regardless of the culture, is clear and high expectations in a warm and loving family environment.”

Meaghan Kozar

Our new coordinator for the APA Studies Program, Meaghan Kozar, completed her doctorate degree in 2012 with the publication of her dissertation, “Our Need for Heroes: Asian American and Black American Reconstructions of Draft Resistance and Japanese American Incarceration Narratives.” Dr. Kozar’s research focuses not only on World War Two draft resistance by Japanese Americans and Black Americans but also the ways in which these histories have been used by Asian American and Black American writers through the 1980s to write a new history that challenges traditional ideas of heroism.